


Three Seconds

by HoshikoNiko



Category: Original Work
Genre: A+ friendship skills, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Go!, Guilt, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, I Tried, I broke everyone in this story, Inspired by Euphoria (TV 2019), Inspired by events that occurred in I love yoo, Mistakes, Multi, Oh god how do you use tags?, Pain, Regret, The Author Regrets Everything, Toxic Relationships, Tragic Accident, Was it foul play, What Have I Done, are you still reading this?, but only a tad, but only slightly - Freeform, except you will if you read the damn story, no beta we die like men, or was it?, stop reading the tags and read the work, traumatic experienes, we'll never know, well everyone except Ellena bc she's a bitch and is just that and will get no development
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:55:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25146562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoshikoNiko/pseuds/HoshikoNiko
Summary: All It takes is three seconds.3 seconds to change your life.3 seconds to ruin it.3 seconds to make a mistake you'll regret for the rest of your life.Rei has made so many mistakes, she's starting to lose count. A few words, 3 seconds, was all it took for her to ruin everything she had. Now she's convinced she deserves the pain, that its Karma paying her a visit. She thinks she's a monster. She's alone in the world.Until she meets David.And he is exactly like her.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	Three Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work published on AO3. I chose not to use warnings... but their will be some times when I'll put warnings at the beginning since their will be some serious themes. I should also add, STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT!
> 
> Just a Mega-bitch who I want to murder btw, you may want to strangle her when you meet her in the story too, so be warned.

I don’t remember much from that night. Just a series of blurred voices and a myriad of colours melding together in the night sky. What seemed like strobe lights flashed before my dazed eyes, as I struggled to keep afloat in the raging ocean that is consciousness. Struggling to keep my head above water as the darkness threatened to swallow me whole, leaving nothing of myself behind. Pain coursed through me like a lightning bolt struggling to get to the ground. I heard indistinct voices, tried to speak, to reassure everyone that I’m fine, but I couldn’t seem to form any words. They just wouldn’t come. I couldn’t make any coherent sense out of my surroundings. Everything was wrong. It all seemed so wrong.

The pain hurt, and it felt like if I just closed my eyes it would all drift away, like the tide retreating. But I had to convince myself I couldn’t let that happen, I couldn’t drift off, because if I did, I didn’t know how I’d ever bring myself to return to the horrible reality that is my life. The pain, the anguish, the mistakes. Guilt wracked my being, as choked sobs escaped me, acidic tears burning as they ran down my face. Nothing made sense anymore, all I felt was the crushing pressure of expectations, the need to escape this life. 

All it takes is 3 seconds.  
3 seconds to change your life. Whether that change is good or bad, it doesn’t matter.  
3 seconds to ruin a life.  
3 seconds to make a mistake.  
3 seconds to do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.

I regret being born. I am a mistake that should never have been allowed. I am ruined and broken, and no matter what I do, who I drag down with me, I can’t quite seem to fix it.

Death would be a sweet release for me, I would love everything to just fade away, no more pain, no more tears. No more being awake at 3am crying and trying to convince myself that It’s all my fault. I deserve to be treated like this. That I’m overreacting. That you get what you give and that Karma’s a bitch I’ll never outrun. I could tell myself that death would free me. And it probably would, to an extent.

Dying is easy. Living is harder.

That’s true, and I know the cost, the price that comes with both life and death. What is the meaning of either? Is there one? I’ve never understood the purpose of my life, or living in general. And then I realise, I could never understand. 

Because this isn’t living. It’s existing.

I feel that there is a monster inside of me, a ravaging, disgusting monster that’s trying to eat me alive, destroy my very being. But the longer I try to get rid of it, the more it destroys me. It hungers for my demise, and there is nothing I can do but sit by whilst it does it, leaving behind nothing but a husk of my former self, a hollow shell.

The pressure of expectations weigh down on me like a literal metric ton of bricks, and the monster is there, feeding off of my discomfort, my pain. And the more I show, the stronger it gets. Killing me slowly, from the inside out. 

Sacrifice your heart and sanity, for the sake of success.

I’ve sacrificed everything I have, and yet I’m still stuck here, nothing to show for it. Nothing to show for my random breakdowns, the feeling of losing myself. That I am not attached to this reality anymore.

What does any of it mean anymore? Can someone please tell me? Because I just don’t seem to understand anymore.

All it takes is a moment in time to destroy everything you’ve worked for. I had little to destroy, yet that singular moment in time ruined everything for me.

And yet I can clearly say it wasn’t my fault.

You see, suicide is like a fire escape. A door that mostly remains shut, except in case of an emergency. I am inside the burning building, yet am too scared to open the door. What’s behind it? It’s too painful to open the door. So I’ll keep it closed, and suffer in silence as the fire burns away my very soul.

My friends always complain, I’m a bit of a hermit, an introvert. I don’t like people, nor do I understand them. Maybe that’s due to the fact most people I meet are often cruel and out to get me. For what reason I never know. I’m just an easy target I guess. I don’t often go to parties, and I’m not exactly popular. People ignore me most of the time, and for that I am grateful. When I’m not being ignored I’m somehow making enemies even though I never give anyone a reason to hate me. I keep my interests and opinions close to my chest. I only speak to someone if they initiate the conversation. Now that i’m thinking about it, they may think that’s rude… I’m always nice, polite. I never pick fights, never go out of my way to make someone feel uncomfortable, and I do accidentally make someone feel that way, I always apologise. I’m no saint, don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some bad things in my life. But I’m trying to make up for it. 

Why is it never enough to try?

So my friends invited me to this party. I don’t know what it was for, and I didn’t really care. I didn’t want to go. But the person hosting the party had invited me and my friends, so I couldn’t decline. He was the type of person in our school that no one could say no to, he’s very popular, and could make your life hell. Of course I’m no pussy, I’m not scared of him or his hollow threats. My life is already hell, I’m practically living my worst nightmare so I’m not bothered if everyone at school decides to hate me. But that wasn’t the problem.

Even when I declined, my friends still dragged me to the party. 

I thought, “This isn’t so bad, I’ll make an appearance, once they go off to dance, I’ll just leave. Or alternatively I could go smoke some pot outside and wait for this hellfest to be over so I can go resume my marathon of Orphan black. And then no one can say I wasn’t there since technically I was.”

So here I am, at some rich kids house, in a slutty dress I would never usually wear, feeling uncomfortable as hec as guys stare at me left right and center.

I hate parties.

Everyones either smoking, snorting, chugging, or fucking. It’s disgusting, and everyone’s sweaty and the room is suffocatingly humid. I don’t like it. I prefer to be alone. The music is so loud it might burst my eardrums, let alone the horrific sounds of my classmates drunk screaming the wrong lyrics like strangled cats…

This night was probably one of the worst nights of my life. And it will definitely go down in history as the worst party thrown at our school. Everything went wrong. And I was the one who paid the price.

Like I said, I hate parties, and people.

Anyway, we got to the party, and everything was fine. The dude who’d invited us met us at the door, and he seemed decent enough (I’d only met him a few times), and sober. So that was good.

Me and this guy talked, he said he wanted to get to know me, that I seemed like a nice girl.

Yeah right, you want to get to know my body you sicko.

It was all fine, no dancing, no alcohol, just talking. It felt weird, but nice. 

Turned out his friend pressures him into throwing the parties, even though he doesn’t want to, because he has a bigger house, and a pool. He hates parties too.

“Why are you here? If you don’t like parties?” The guy, David, asked, after I told him that I was the same as him.

“I dunno, my friends dragged me here. I always have a hard time saying no.” I reply. I expected him to show his true colours then, do an eyebrow wiggle or something that would alert me he wasn't a nice guy, like all the others had. But I studied his face, and saw nothing. A flicker of emotion, yet a negative and unreadable one. 

He sighed. “Why? Why don’t you just say no?”

I rolled my eyes, “I could ask you the same thing, David.” I said emphasising his name, as if to call him out.

He chuckled before giving me a serious look. “You gonna give me an answer? Or what?”

I sighed deeply, shifting slightly in the uncomfortable black dress, before answering, my eyes trained on the floor. “Let’s just say I’ve been through plenty of friends. They always complain that I’m no fun, and then they leave. They complain, so I go to the parties they invite me to, just to get them off my back every once in a while. They always go off on their own at parties, and I always end up getting hurt. But it’s okay, because now they won’t leave me, because suddenly I’m not ‘no fun.’”

“So you make yourself uncomfortable, and go through pain, just to keep your friends from abandoning you?” He asks, I nodd. “That’s sad, Rei. Don’t you ever get to think about yourself, and what you want?”

“What I want doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. It’s not exactly as if any of this is permanent anyways. I get hurt, I push through the pain. I can endure it, so long as I’m not alone…” I say, as I look longingly at my friends Kaci and Lauren, laughing and dancing, sharing a bottle of something or other, each with a cigarette in their free hands.

“Time is an illusion to help things make sense, it’s not fixed, and it’s not permanent.” I continue, “Someday I’ll leave this place, and maybe I’ll be happy. Who knows?”

“You matter.” He says, his voice low, “You deserve to be happy, in the moment. Why do you put up with it, when there are other people who’d be much nicer to you? Rather than making you feel like you’re forced to go to parties.”

I think about it for a moment, contemplating what he’d said. Why do I put up with it? Most times I don’t, I move on, find new friends. But they're all the same. It’s like I’m a magnet for toxic relationships. But maybe, that’s what I choose. What’s life without a little bit of pain?

“I guess, I feel like I deserve it. This,” I say, gesturing, “Is what I deserve. And so it’s what Karma’s given me.”

He looked at me confused, “All it took was 3 seconds, and I destroyed a life…”  
I felt my eyes well up, but forced the tears to stay inside of me. I can’t cry, I don’t deserve his sympathy.

“And now… I’m paying the price.” I said, and my eyes wandered over to the corner of the room, settling on a girl. 

She was tall, shoulder-length, thick brown hair, freckles, and brown eyes you could get lost in. I sighed, smiling sadly as I saw her laughing with her friends. Her new friends. No matter how much I wanted it, I could never be a part of her life anymore. She wouldn’t want me back. Not now. But the pain of missing her hurt more than the numbness of the switchblade cutting across my skin.

Hana. I’m sorry.

“I’ve lost everything. There’s no going back from where I’ve been.” I say, and he catches my gaze. He had the same kind of pain in his eyes. The one you can’t erase, a guilty, disgusted pain that makes you a monster, because you caused this pain through your own mistakes. We both knew in that moment, what the other was feeling, and thinking.

Once you stain your hands in blood, there’s no turning back, no washing it off. No going back to how it used to be.

Phantom pain. Everyone, in some way, is trying to escape their regrets and mistakes. That’s why parties end up like this. Why the night ended so horribly. Blame, regret and guilt. Mix that with alcohol and drugs, you get a volatile reaction.

“No matter what you did, Rei, you deserve to be happy. You clearly just made a mistake. We all make mistakes, it doesn’t make us monsters, it makes us human.” David replied, clearly trying to convince himself of this lie.

I laughed slightly, “You know, I was only going to stay for like fifteen minutes. Just enough for Kaci and Lauren to get distracted, and then I was going to leave. They get so drunk they blackout anyways so it’s not like it’d be hard to convince them I was there the whole time.”

The boy smiled, laughing. “I’d do the same, if this weren’t my house and there weren’t people upstairs doing god knows what…”

For some reason, he felt so comfortable to talk to. We talked so naturally, I didn’t feel the need to be someone else around him. It felt that we got each other. I barely feel that anymore.  
For the first time, I wanted to stay at this party.

“Do you want a drink? I could so use one right now.” I said, pointing over to the refreshment bar.

He nodded, and I walked away, grabbing two cups of sourz. I heard my name being called, and turned around, setting the drinks on the side. I looked around, and caught Ellena giving me the middle finger from across the room. Hana was behind her, shaking the obnoxious brunette, telling her to stop. Nice to know she still has respect, even though I’m a backstabbing bitch.

~3rd person POV for a hot sec~

Hana shook the shorter girl, hushed whispering, “Stop Ellena! You don’t need to do that!”

The annoying girl just snapped back at her friend, “But you remember what she did right? How dare she show her face here?” 

“This party is for the schools in the area Ellena, she probably got invited, it’s not our problem. And no matter what she did, I don’t want to be a bitch about it. Just move on already.”

Rebecca, a tall ginger haired girl, piped up from behind. “It’s not as if we need to make her feel any worse Ellena, she already looks like shit. Just leave it.”

But of course she didn’t listen, cupping her hands around her mouth, taking a deep breath, and shouting.

“Yo, I hope you get drugged and raped at this party you bitch! You deserve to die for what you did, and spend eternity in hell!”

Rei looked over at the shorter girl, giving her a death-glare, before laughing. “Nice joke.”  
Ellena froze.

“No seriously, good one! I know I deserved it but damnnnn! Nice to know someone else thinks that too.”

~back to 1st person now~

I turned around grabbing our drinks, and walking off. Ever since the first time, I’ve always been careful. But in that moment, I was careless, and disregarded the first rule of parties.

Never take your eyes off your drink.

**Author's Note:**

> I had no intention of making this an actual story with a plot, it started out as vent writing. And well here we are. I usually write from my own experiences and feelings. Although to say, this is something that is not entirely applicable for me. I've had plenty of toxic relationships, but Rei was someone who I guess just became her own person with a backstory, entirely separate from what I wanted to write, as I wrote it. So that's fun.


End file.
